The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Everybody Hates Matt Gaetz

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

The bipartisan loathing of Gaetz is almost a kumbaya moment. Meanwhile, Trump likes to say the US is turning into a third world country, and he's working on that with his calls to shoot shoplifters and execute drug dealers. Will Saletan joins Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday.

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Tread Experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with the Michelin X-Ice Snow Tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is October 2nd, 2023. We actually

made it through September. Hey, just a quick note for those of you that are regular listeners of the podcast. If you actually want to see the podcast, if you actually want to watch, we are now on YouTube. And also, just in case you don't get enough morning shots, we also have a short shots that we're putting out on YouTube as well. Our shot on Friday was about the incredible clown car in a dumpster fire of the GOP impeachment hearing. And you can find that on YouTube as well. So just check it out. Or you could just keep listening to us on the podcast. So because it's Monday, I'm joined by my colleague, Will Salatang. Will, we have so much stuff to talk about today.

We do have a lot to talk about. And it wasn't the stuff I thought we were going to be talking about. On my list, we have to get to what happened over the weekend, the shutdown that did not occur, the coup that is about to occur. Matt Gaetz has decided that he's going to go after Kevin McCarthy. What a surprise. I mean, this is like the least shocking development of the year. But it does occur to me, I mean, before we, we're going to get to that a little bit later, it does occur to me, we have a really bitterly divided Congress, don't we? Yeah. But there is one thing upon which there is general agreement, there is consensus that everybody hates Matt Gaetz. Everybody hates Matt Gaetz. I mean, they just loathe him. I mean, they loathe

him on so many different levels. I mean, let's count the ways. His personality, his dishonesty, the way he blows up his own ideological side, didn't get any spending cuts, the fact that he's just kind of a creepy guy. It's kind of a kumbaya moment that you can see there's bipartisan agreement in all of that. So I totally thought you were going to say what Matt Gaetz said, which is everybody hates Kevin McCarthy. But no, in fact, your thesis is more true. Well, nobody necessarily respects or fears Kevin McCarthy. So we'll talk about the self-guarded speaker and what happened to him over the weekend where he had to go hat in hand to the Democrats. And of course, I love the way he's spinning this, that I am the adult in the room.

Yeah, I'm not sure that that's the tape. We're going to get to that. So one of the things, and we pass over some of these things too much. My newsletter today is about the banality of crazy, which is a phrase that I borrowed from Brian Klass, who basically says, look, we get numbed by how nuts a lot of this is. And the news media generally has a bias towards things that are new. And as a result, Donald Trump's crazy is not new, right? So Joe Biden slips and maybe falls or doesn't fall. And that's a big story. You know, Donald Trump then

calls for the execution of a leading American general. And it's sort of like, yeah, well, that's Donald Trump. I mean, it's just more insanity. So we actually don't treat the insanity as a big story. It's actually a really good point. So one of the big crazy stories from last week, and I just don't want to totally let it go, is his suggestion that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be given the death penalty. This is Mark Milley. And over the weekend, Mark Milley appeared to, appeared to, appeared to, we have to pretend, answered Donald Trump when he had this to say about the oath that the men and women of the U.S. military take. We don't take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator.

We don't take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that it's America, and we're willing to die to protect it. Okay, so Will Salatan. I don't think that was particularly subtle on General Milley's part, who he was talking about, what he was talking about. Your thoughts? Right. Well, a wannabe dictator, obviously, is a reference to the former president. But a couple of things about what Milley said. This was really remarkable. And I watched this at the time. And Joe Biden sat there stone-faced. Kamala Harris sat there stone-faced. Lloyd Austin. But they all knew what was being said there. So it's a dig at Trump.

But a couple of things. One, this is the difference between a real patriot and a fake one, right? Donald Trump is a fake patriot. He talks about America. But it's really all about him and what he can do for America and all the money he gets for the farmers and all that kind of thing. Mark Milley is a genuine patriot. And part of the way you can recognize that is that Mark Milley understands the difference between America. He's not America

first. He's America as an idea. He understands that America is a country built on a constitution. It's built around ideas of liberty and equality. And it's not blood and soil. That's what Donald Trump doesn't understand. So when Milley talks about it, he says, we take an oath to the constitution and to that word, the idea of America. The second thing that's important about this is Milley is correct that Trump is a wannabe dictator. And if he could, you know, control America the way that, you know, Kim Jong-un or Vladimir Putin controls their country, he would. And one reason why that hasn't happened, even though Donald Trump attempted it is that the United States military didn't go along, right? Trump

tried to co-opt the military. He tried to make the military, and he would in a second term try to make the military. Because he thinks of the military as being his personal possession, right? I mean, there is a philosophical issue here because Donald Trump clearly thinks of the commander in chief, the president of the United States, as being the man who has all of the power, can do anything he wants, and this is his military. And here you have Mark Milley saying, no, we don't pledge allegiance to the man. We pledge allegiance to the Constitution. But, look, there's a little bit of edginess here, isn't there? Because under our Constitution, the president is the commander in chief.

He issues orders, and those orders have to be obeyed. Did you see the Wall Street Journal editorial? They actually took this whole episode and said, very disturbing that Mark Milley would himself say these disturbing things, implying that the military might not follow the lead of the elected civilian leadership. So, I mean, I think they got this thing absolutely upside down, but we're now having this rethinking. The military does not work for the president. And there are some things the president might ask us to do that we are not going to follow. I mean, so this is not just boilerplate pokes at Donald Trump, is it? No, no, not at all. And let's all remember Donald Trump referring to my generals, right?

Thinking that the generals work for him. But let's also remember Trump saying, I think it was in one of the debates with Hillary Clinton, or no, maybe it was in one of the Republican primary debates. In any event, it was in 2016. He said that he would order, you know, he was asked by Brett Baier at one of the debates, what happens if the military refuses to follow one of your orders to violate the Geneva Conventions, to violate human rights? Right. Because Trump said things like he would execute people. I mean, he would order them to commit torture, for example.

And they would kill the families. Oh, yes. They would also target the families. Right. Try to deliberately target, not accidentally as collateral damage that the families have, right? It'll take them hostage and kill them. And so Brett Baier says, what if the military refuses these orders?

Because they're illegal orders. And Trump says they won't refuse me. Trump says they won't refuse me. Milley is saying we don't put one man who orders us to do illegal things over the Constitution, that the military would not follow those orders. And that is actually crucial. So the Wall Street Journal does have it upside down. And the reason that we still have a democracy, Charlie, is that the military doesn't follow such orders from a wannabe dictator. And if they ever did, we could lose our country. Okay, so the other thing over the weekend,

I mean, this speech, going back to the banality of crazy, Donald Trump goes out to California and he delivers yet another deranged speech. But I think it's important to note how he keeps escalating his rhetoric. Look, I've written before, you know, the brutality is the point. I mean, Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he kind of likes shooting people. I mean, he wants to build a wall with, you know, razors on top. He wants to shoot protesters in the legs. He said, you know, frequently that he wants to execute drug dealers and human traffickers. You know, he quotes President Xi of China saying that they don't have a drug problem because they just execute them, you know, the day of the trial. So this is something that Donald Trump has been

dining out on for some time and has been using as part of his stump speech. But he escalated over the weekend, didn't he? I mean, where do you want to start? Let's start at the least significant things. I mean, it's interesting, the former president of the United States, who of course is running to be the leader of the party that is really, really concerned with what young people hear and read in schools, uses his best presidential words to call for the indictment of Joe Biden. Let's play this. Trigger warning, by the way. You become president and you don't like somebody, or if somebody's beating you by 10, 15, or 20 points, like we're doing with Crooked Joe Biden, let's indict the motherfucker. Let's indict him.

Okay, now, actually, as I listen to that again, is the motherfucker referring to Biden or to himself? Is he trying to quote the crooked Joe Biden is saying let's indict him? Yeah, right. So just to be fair to Donald Trump, he's suggesting that that's what the other side is doing, that they're saying, okay. Right, okay. So he's the motherfucker.

Yes. Now, there's a twist people didn't see coming. Right. So he also mocks the hammer attack of Nancy Pelosi's husband, which is so, we're not even going to play it, but I mean, the crowd's laughing because, you know, there's really nothing funnier than making jokes about an 82 year old man being beaten with hammers. And he also comes up with a new category for extrajudicial police killings. Now, I just want to back up a little bit. Earlier this year, I wrote that there's going to be a new litmus test in the Republican Party, which is that it's not just cruelty anymore. It's like, who will be the most enthusiastic

in terms of endorsing brutal policies? And you could tell that Ron DeSantis, who really, really thought that he could be the mini-me, the mini-Trump-me, he wants to participate in this Olympics brutality by laying out who he wants to kill. And remember what he said about killing folks stone cold dead at the border? This is Ron DeSantis. So we are going to authorize the use of deadly force against the cartels. If you have somebody coming in with the fentanyl on their in the backpack, they even break through the border wall where there is wall. If they're doing that, that's the last thing they're going to be able to do because we're going to leave them stone

cold dead at the border. We're not putting up with it anymore. Now, Will, I know this is kind of a quibble, but I assume that they will check the backpacks afterwards to make sure that they have fentanyl instead of Skittles in them, right? And if it doesn't have the fentanyl, you can be sure they will put the fentanyl in the backpack. I mean, this is the thing is you just sort of know it's like, we're going to kill them dead. We're not going to warn them. We're not going to fire warning shots. We're not shooting. You know, all of this stuff. There's no arrest. There's no trial. There's no due process because the applause line is stone cold dead. And he thinks that he's going to show over again, and I'm sorry to repeat ourselves on this, that for Republican voters, why would they want a knockoff Donald Trump when they can have the real thing? And over the weekend, Donald Trump basically says, yeah, you just want to kill people coming across the border with fentanyl. You want to kill them stolen, cold, dead. I will see you and raise you. So here is Donald Trump saying that he, if he's president again, he will order

law enforcement to go into cities and shoot shoplifters. Shoplifters. Listen to this. And we will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. Shot. Shot. Okay. Again, no arrest, no trial, no due process. But I think it's worth spending a moment on this. The crowd loves this. This is the hot moment. And you know that Donald Trump with his reptilian instinct, in his mind, he'll play about what really hit the erogenous zones of that MAGA crowd. And this was, listen to the crowd. He's just said, we are going to shoot shoplifters coming out of a store. We're going to order to them, again, not arrest them, not try them, not go through due process. We're going to shoot them.

And the crowd just loses its mind. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And everything will immediately stop. You won't have any more of that. It's very simple. All you have to do is kill people. Don't worry about any of this other process. And the crowd's reaction was Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

We can't make this shit up, Will. I mean, I'm just, you know, I've seen rallies like this, but not in our country. Right. I mean, you know, Trump keeps saying, you know, we're turning into a third world country. He's doing his best to make that true. And so is his party in general, right. And as the DeSantis clip illustrates, how do you become a third world? How do you lose your democracy? Well, one way was to corrupt the military to make them an instrument of the current president. Another way is to overturn elections, to refuse to leave office when the people try to turn you out. Here's a third way, right? Which is to eliminate due process to eliminate. I mean, remember Trump, his previous applause line when he announced for president last year was one day trials. We're going to have one day trials for drug dealers.

So one was apparently too many. Right, right. One was too many. So now we're at zero days. So the operative phrases, obviously, in what we just heard were DeSantis saying, we're going to leave you stone cold dead at the border. We're going to shoot you on sight. Right. And by the way, DeSantis, we don't even know if somebody has fentanyl on their backpack, are they a dealer? Are they a

mule? Are they one of the people who like, you know, we're going to make you carry drugs in in exchange for getting your child across the border. So we have no idea whether you're actually hitting somebody major. So if we actually did this, it would be absolutely barbaric. But Trump has one up that as you you point out, by on the border, the presumption is the person coming in is not an American, not that we should, you know, disregard human rights. But now Trump is saying our own people, Americans in our own country, he says, we're going to shoot you, I believe his phrase was, as you're leaving the store. So there's no question about you go undergoing any inspection, right? You're coming out of the building and we shoot you.

Well, once we do that, what kind of country are we anymore, right? He says America first, but he's eliminating the difference between America and other countries that don't have any of our constitutional protections. I have a small quibble that I don't think you're going to quibble with, is that you do talk about losing our democracy. When we use the word democracy, what we mean is a liberal constitutional order. Because in a democracy, the crowd can yell Trump, Trump, Trump. And what if a majority of Americans decide they support this and they love this?

By the way, you know, that crowd that was chanting Barabbas, Barabbas, Barabbas, that was pretty democratic, wasn't it? So the point here is not just democracy as in the rule of the majority. It is also the rule of law. It is the fact that the majority does not get to kill the minority. It means that the majority cannot say, hey, you know what, we're going to do away with due process of law and trials and the presumption of innocent and everything. There are many, many things that are anti-democratic because we understand that a liberal democratic constitutional order relies on all of those elitist norms. I was reading, I think, the comments section. Somebody was saying, well, you keep talking about democracy.

So what if Donald Trump wins 51% of the vote? Isn't that a triumph of democracy? Well, if he then uses that democratic majority to destroy the constitutional order and the rule of law, that is not a win for democracy. And it shows a misunderstanding of what we mean by the term. So I think that there's a little bit more precision. But I know you don't disagree with me on that. No, I fully agree with you. But this is a paradox that you and I and other defenders of the constitutional system have to grapple with, because we believe in democracy. We also believe in the Constitution and its protections. And what do you do when we have this very large movement of people who are cheering the destruction of those principles, right? What if most Americans reject them?

I don't have a simple answer to this, but my gut says we have to preserve America. And by that, I don't mean the blood and soil of America. I don't mean white people. I mean the ideas of America. What distinguishes America from countries like Russia or North Korea, where human rights are disregarded, where there is no constitutional protection. And once we go with the mob, you know, I think we've lost that. Well, and also, I mean, there is always this long running tension between security and

freedom, right? And people are willing, and let's be honest about it, a lot of people are willing to make that trade-off, which is also why it is absolutely essential for whatever governing party there is to make sure that public safety is protected. Because otherwise, if the public decides that this party will not protect the border and or law and order, they will turn to the extremists, to the Trump, Trump, Trump, Barabbas crowd. I fully agree with that. And this is really important for you and me to express to people, because I think that too many leaders in the Democratic Party don't take security issues seriously enough, by which I mean, a lot of the crime stuff is overblown. And statistically,

it's not great, but the border situation is really bad. Okay. We have just a flood of people coming across the border. It's a giant business moving people up the Western hemisphere using our asylum laws. And if the Democratic Party doesn't show the voters that we're taking this seriously and that we're going to restore some order in terms of people coming into our country, there is a significant danger of those people going over and supporting a wannabe dictator in Trump or DeSantis or somebody else. Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who

value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around. Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash charlie. That's thebulwark.com forward slash charlie. Let me get through this together, I promise.

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your dread's worn down or you need a new wheel, through this together. I promise. card with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. Okay, so let's talk about the very surprising developments over the weekend. I think that if you'd gone to the betting pools, the odds would have been very heavily against us avoiding a shutdown, mainly because nobody really expected that Kevin McCarthy would essentially give up this agenda. I mean, for weeks and months, he's been threatening to shut down the federal government unless he got massive domestic spending cuts and all of these tough on the border provisions. And then over the weekend, he looked around, realized there was no way he was going to get that from his own caucus. So he basically caved a clean CR, relied on

Democratic votes. He did not get the spending cuts, did not get the border provisions. He screwed over Ukraine, but we'll leave that aside for a second. So what happened here? Because he's out saying, I am the adult in the room. I mean, there are dueling headlines, you know, why Kevin McCarthy decided to defy and take on the right versus Kevin McCarthy surrenders. So which camp do you come down to? Well, I'm going to let you call the soundbites, OK? Because you were following this. I'm going to turn over this to you now, what we should be listening to, okay, from the Sunday shows as they try to spin this. Let me just start with the general outline of this. As the pony guy, I'm very excited today because instead of having to look for the pony under the manure, you're going to have to look for the manure under the pony, right? Because the pony's right out there. We avoided

this shutdown. I got to admit, I did not expect that. So I'm just going to give you my optimistic spin, which today is merited by what happened. I think we certainly began to restore the proper incentives in this country. That is to say, what we want to do is stop the crazy behavior from being rewarded, crazy political behavior. Shutting down the government is crazy behavior. It's crazy behavior to begin with, because they're going to end up paying people for not having worked, you know, and they're going to, meanwhile, they're going to have put them through, you know, worrying about their paychecks. They're utterly pointless, right? They don't accomplish anything

fiscally conservative or anything else. But Kevin McCarthy flinched. He flinched away from that. He knew, I believe he recognized that that was going to hurt his party. And if the Speaker of the House flinches because he recognizes the shutdown is going to hurt him, then we've begun to restore the incentives that will... Now, it's only 45 days. I guess if you're looking for the pile under the pony, there it is. And we'll be back here again. And I don't know if Kevin McCarthy can survive with a bunch of Matt Gaetz's in his conference. But for 45 days, I'm going to take a victory lap. So tell me what you think.

It just seems premature at this point. I mean, I led with this quote from former House aide Brendan Buck, who used to be the spokesman for both John Boehner and for Paul Ryan. He says, I think the best way to understand what happened today is that this shutdown was simply too stupid, even for the House. People are like, it is nuts. But you do have Kevin McCarthy doing something that I think a lot of observers said would be political suicide. He went to the Democrats, cut a deal with them. The conservatives, as predicted, got absolutely nothing. And this is part of this, the genius of the Matt Gaetzes, that if they would have stuck

together, they might have been able to get some modest cuts, not everything, but they were demanding, you know, these double digit percentage cuts. And what did they get? Absolutely nothing. And let's say not the big winner of the weekend. Matt Gaetz is now, of course, pledging that he is going to try to oust Kevin McCarthy, which raises all kinds of interesting questions, which you and I will get to. And I want to hear your prediction. But let's play Jake Tapper and Matt Gaetz. Since the mid-90s, this country has been governed by either continuing resolution or omnibus spending. And you have voted for continuing resolution in the past. Well, I'm five years sober voting for continuing resolutions, and I should note that during those years,

President Trump was growing the economy. But January marked a difference. Yeah, and you know what? Growing the deficits as well. I regret. Growing the deficits as well. But we were growing the economy. And look, you're talking about the national debt.

You were growing. What did he add? $7 trillion, $8 trillion to the national debt? And by the way, I voted against 10 continuing resolutions under Donald Trump. I did not stand with Donald Trump on all of his spending priorities. I voted against it way more. My point is, I don't know what this shutdown did to help the cause. What shut down? The shutdown that almost happened. OK, so there wasn't a shutdown. So the threat of shutdown that you created to break the fever. We have to move to single subject spending bills. You broke a fever? No, we didn't. Unfortunately, that's why we have

to now move to vacate because we have to get a system where the House and Senate will negotiate over each of these agencies of government independently. And I understand that in divided government, that means that you have to take into account the views of Senate Democrats, the views of the White House. But what I want to do, of course, you understand that, of course, because you're on the floor of the House talking about what Kevin McCarthy needs to do is to allow line item vetoes by people like you, line item votes against the salaries of people who are investigating Donald Trump, the salaries of individuals who are offering sweetheart deals to Hunter Biden. That to me is not the language of somebody who understands the balance of power in the House and Senate and how all legislation actually functions.

Well, I think that is that to me is the language of somebody who is looking for clicks and likes and Fox hits, not somebody who actually is trying to reduce the debt. Oh, well, yes. Well, that does sound like the person who doesn't have the slightest fucking idea what he's talking about. It has no interest in actually reducing the debt. Right. So, well, Bat Gates, he's unserious about policy, right? Kevin McCarthy's line is, would you rather have 100% of nothing or, you know, 50% or 80% of something?

Gates would rather have 100% of nothing because he's or 80% of something. Gates would rather have 100% of nothing because he's not about legislating. He's about this. And in that clip, you can hear he's totally obsessed with his voting record, what I voted for, what I didn't vote for, as opposed to what got passed. Because what happened here is that because Matt Gates and a bunch of other crazies wouldn't accept Kevin McCarthy's version of a CR. McCarthy turned around. I give McCarthy some credit for this, right? He's a weasel, but McCarthy then turned around and said, okay, if I can't get it from my right, I'll get it from my left. He goes to the Democrats. So Matt Gaetz got the opposite of what he wanted in terms of a legislation, but Matt Gaetz doesn't

care because he doesn't care what the policy actually is. In fact, if the policy is bad from his point of view, if the government continues to run up more debt, that's great for Matt Gaetz because he's just about posturing and complaining about the system. They have given Matt Gaetz, the voters have given him a job with responsibility, but he doesn't want that job. He doesn't want to be a congressperson doing something, passing legislation. He's like doubling as a host on Newsmax, for God's sake, right? So Tapper has him dead to rights on what he's about. vacate. This is complicated, I think, objectively speaking, but in the context, it's really complicated. In order to be Speaker, you have to have a majority of elected members of the House, which is usually 218. I don't know what it is right now. So Kevin McCarthy, I don't even think

got 218 votes when he was elected after the 15 ballots, right? So you have a motion to vacate. How will Democrats vote on this? This is the interesting question, that if Kevin McCarthy does not have 218 votes in the Republican caucus, and by the way, just so people know, members of the opposite party never vote for the speaker of the other party. It's just never done. No Democrat voted for Kevin McCarthy. So will any of that change? If Kevin McCarthy does not get 218 votes, what will the Democrats do?

Will they vote to rescue Kevin McCarthy? Will they vote if Kevin McCarthy does not get 218 votes, what will the Democrats do? Will they vote to rescue Kevin McCarthy? Will they vote against Kevin McCarthy? Will they vote present? Will they just not show up in order to lower the threshold? What do you think? Well, what is the calculation here? So this is somewhat complicated by the fact that this is a motion to vacate. It's an affirmative motion. So a Democrat doesn't have to vote for Kevin McCarthy to help sink this motion and bail out McCarthy. As you point out, they can vote present. They can do various other tricks to sort of lower the number.

You need 218 votes to kick him out. Right. To me, Charlie, it depends on what is Kevin McCarthy's relationship with Hakeem Jeffries and what is McCarthy offering? Because AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was on CNN, I think, and was asked about this, what would she do and what would Democrats do? And she said, they'll follow Jeffries, but she said, we're not going to give our votes away for nothing. So McCarthy just had to drop in order to get the CR passed. He had to drop a bunch of things that would have ticked off

Democrats. So he made concessions. What else is McCarthy willing to offer Democrats to save his skin? We don't know the answer to that yet. Not the bogus impeachment hearings. The fundamental thing about Kevin McCarthy is that he is a weasel. Yes. There's nothing he won't offer to save his skin if he needs to. And now we're just down to the question of to whom will he offer it? So Gates's argument is if McCarthy cuts a deal with Democrats to save his skin, to save his job, Gates says, I can't control that, but then he'll be owned by the Democrats. What if McCarthy does that? He could do that. He could make some concessions. And maybe he holds together some coalition

of Democrats and Republicans. And then it's a really open question what the House looks like at that point. I assume there would be more motions on the right to take down McCarthy, but would they succeed? You're Hakeem Jeffries and you're sitting in the room with Kevin McCarthy and, you know, Kevin obviously now suddenly needs Democratic votes to survive. So what's on the table? Ukraine's on the table, no massive cuts to domestic spendings on the table, right? I mean, those sorts of things. No draconian border policy is on the table. The Biden impeachment. I mean, how do Democrats save Kevin McCarthy? I'm just trying to imagine how that negotiation goes.

I don't know the answer to that. You know, and then there's the question of who comes in after McCarthy. Like, you got to have an alternative. Because remember, McCarthy survived all of this in January because they didn't have an alternative, right? Scalise is sick. He's dealing with blood cancer. He's going to have to, we'll see how he does.

But other people didn't want the job. We've had a series of other people decline to be the alternative to McCarthy. So McCarthy may just be figuring that they don't have anybody to replace him. And Charlie, that may be the bet that McCarthy has already made by cutting this deal on the CR. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family.

Enjoy them for years with the Michelin X-Ice Snow Tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.ca Okay, so now the relatively bad news, because, you know, you found the pony. Now I'm going to find the pile of manure. It was a couple of things that were very, very disturbing over the weekend, including the fact that for the first time, a majority of Republicans in the House voted against aid to Ukraine. And the one thing that was

left out of this, of all of the things that Kevin McCarthy said, I'm going to stick with this, is let's screw over Ukraine, not include, is it what we're talking about, $300 million? I think the Senate had $6 billion in their version of the CR. The other really bad thing was that Mitch McConnell, who has been really a stand-up guy on the Ukraine stuff, like, don't DM me on this. He actually has said that he is not going to cut off aid to Ukraine. He went to his caucus and said, I think we ought to stand tough on the Ukraine aid. And a majority of Republicans in the Senate said, yeah, we're not backing you on this. We just want to go along with this deal. So Ukraine and the supporters of Ukraine have to be a little bit concerned about

this. Let's play Kevin McCarthy's justification for why he's holding Ukraine hostage in this deal. The American border matters and more people, more Americans are dying on our border than Americans are dying in Ukraine. So you are explicitly right now linking any Ukraine aid vote to a border bill. I am telling you that the American border matters and that is our priority to make sure we secure that. So that has to be first. I'm going to make sure that the weapons are provided for Ukraine, but they're not going to get some big package if the border is not secure. But you haven't figured out yet the vehicle through which to move that Ukraine aid or a date by which to do it. We will work with people in need, but the one thing the White House has to understand,

they better be prepared to secure American border. Okay, so Will, the big picture here is that the Republican Party, which was the party of Ronald Reagan, is no longer. So part of it is what you just identified, a majority of the House Republican Conference voting against aid to Ukraine. The isolationists are taking control. But the other thing that happened here is Kevin McCarthy, who is nominally a defender of Ukraine, and he is sympathetic to supporting Ukraine, is now using Ukraine as a wedge issue against the Democrats. So McCarthy says there about the Democrats, they're not going to get some big package for Ukraine if the border is not secure. So

we want some border concessions from the Democrats, and we're going to give them concessions on Ukraine. McCarthy is disowning Ukraine as an issue. He's saying that to give money to defend Ukraine is a democratic, not a Republican priority. It's something that the Republicans would do as a favor in exchange for border concessions. Now, I'm for some border concessions because it's completely out of control. But the idea that the Republican Party does this not because it believes in defending Ukraine, not because it believes in stopping Russian aggression, but because the Democratic Party believes in those things. The Democratic Party is the one that believes in

defending a democracy against Russia, and that's a favor to the Democrats. That signals a complete realignment of the parties on foreign policy and on the role of America and the world. It is mind-blowing for those of us that remember what the political alignments were in the 1980s. Now, your good friend, Lindsey Graham, who has been a very strong, staunch supporter of Ukraine, appears to be endorsing McCarthy's linkage of aid to Ukraine to the border. So here's Lindsey from yesterday morning. You're our Lindsey Whisperer expert. He will help Ukraine, but he's telling everybody in the country, including me, to the border. So here's Lindsey from yesterday morning. You're our Lindsey Whisperer expert. He will help Ukraine, but he's telling everybody in the country, including me,

you better send something over for the border for me to help Ukraine. And he's right to make that demand. I have the sense that there is a compromise that is possible here, which is the kind of thing that I'm probably going to regret saying. But going back to your previous points, it is in the Biden administration's interest to look like they're doing something on the border, right? And to get the aid for Ukraine. Is there any possible compromise that Republicans will say, okay, you've now done enough on the border to satisfy us to release Ukraine? I mean, you understand this is one of their main talking points, their main issues. Are they ever going to actually cut a deal with the Biden administration? It strikes me as very much in the interest of the Biden administration to cut a deal, take the border issue, you know, water that down, get the aid for Ukraine. But can

Republicans do that? Can they actually concede that we're on the same page with you evil open border Democrats who are bringing in the fentanyl and the rapists? I think they can cut a deal. And, you know, the only way out of this other than another shutdown is that they will cut some kind of a deal and it will involve both of those. But what's significant to me about the Lindsey Graham comment, it's not just Lindsey Graham. Mike Lawler, who's a Republican House member in a swing district, was on the floor during the debate over this CR. And he said to the Democrats, this is a quote from Lawler, are you telling me you would shut down the government if there is not Ukraine funding? So the point is, Lawler, he's also using Ukraine as a wedge issue. You Democrats are holding up everything else over money to Ukraine. It's your issue, right? So we have a

large percentage of isolationists now in the Republican Party, and those votes against Ukraine funding signify that, right? But beyond that, we now have Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker, who is nominally a supporter of Ukraine, using Ukraine funding as a wedge issue against the Democrats. Lindsey Graham, who is nominally one of the most stalwart Republicans on Ukraine, agreeing to hold the Ukraine money hostage for border concessions, right? Mike Lawler, who is a Republican in a swing district, who is not supposed to be one of the crazies. So this is now a party-wide capitulation on the right.

The Republican Party is no longer the party of defending democracies against totalitarianism or against Putin. It is the party that is fundamentally isolationist or is willing to use isolationism in public opinion as a weapon against Democrats and as a weapon against Ukraine. Okay, so we haven't done any horse race punditry on today's show. And by the way, there's so much other stuff going on. I mean, it does seem to be relevant on Earth 2.0 that the former president's trial in New York about the fraud of his companies is starting today. And Donald Trump is saying that he's going to

be in court, which will be very, very interesting. He's ranting and railing. The judge has essentially already ruled, yeah, you're a crook, you're a fraudster, and I'm taking away your business. So he's already lost this trial. Kind of an interesting calculation on his part to show up in New York. Although I think that he's not totally inaccurate in saying that, you know, simply because he's cheated and lied on his taxes and valuation, that's not going to budge Republican voters. Look, I mean, if they're willing to overlook the conspiracy, the insurrection, the rape and all of that stuff. There's no primary voter that's going to go, oh, really? You overvalued Mar-a-Lago. I think he kind of knows that, right? That's not going to be a problem for him. I'm less concerned about the people's judgments about the particulars

of a civil case than I am about the whole bizarre incentive system where a guy gets indicted four times and goes up in the polls in his party, right? So that's what's totally messed up. So if I can just return to what we talked about at the beginning, I think the goal here is to restore rational incentives, right? So don't shut down the government. That will hurt you. That seems to have had an effect. Kevin McCarthy is recognizing the rational incentive. Here, the rational incentive to restore is don't commit crimes or it will hurt you politically yeah that would be good right now it's really bad that committing crimes and blaming the evil you know jack-booted thugs is helping donald trump in the republican primary so i will be happy if what

comes out of this is gradually the trials begin the evidence is presented and if the it would be great if the initial reaction of Republicans, which was the evil government is out to take down Trump, they've weaponized law enforcement, changes to, oh gosh, now that we see the evidence presented against him, some of us are not going to vote for him and that will hurt him. Well, I wouldn't hold my breath on that. So among the other news stories we got over the weekend, RFK Jr. is floating an independent bid. Of course, this leads to all sorts of, you know, predictive punditry about who does this hurt more? Does this hurt Trump?

OK, so you can make the case that RFK hurts Trump because, you know, he's clearly established himself as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist. He's been big on Fox, Clearly, right now, his political appeal. I'm not convinced of that because I think there's a big swath of voters that think that he's still RFK Jr. And so that there might be some attrition of Democratic votes, particularly from, shall we say, elderly voters who think, I like that RFK Sr. He's a Kennedy. I've always voted for Kennedy. So where do you come down on this? I mean, again, I don't know the answer. We'll have to get some more data on this. And even when we get data, who knows when we get to the ballot box. But RFK, junior, running as an independent, you know where the money is going to come from. The money is going to come from the right. He's

going to get propped up by MAGA world. But does it hurt Trump more or does it hurt Biden more? Crystal ball, Will. RFK's running. He's been running in the horseshoe lane, right? The crazy part of the right and the crazy part of the left, and they all come together with the horseshoe. So I think Democrats have done a pretty good job of prying a lot of rational Democrats away from him. That is showing he's an anti-vaxxer. So there's various signifiers

about RFK. He's not one of us. So he'll keep his crazies on the right. I don't think he's going to hurt Biden that much at this point, because I think he's already lost a lot of the people who would vote for Biden. You know who I think he's going to hurt? Cornel West. I think that there's a pocket of people who are not going to vote for Trump or Biden. They're nuts. And some of them would vote for Cornel West or Ralph Nader or Jill Stein or whoever. And RFK Jr. is going to pick up those people because he's got the name. We should devote a whole show to the explanation or try to understand this horseshoe theory where the far left and the far right have come together and in their sort of nuttiness and extremism are not that far apart. It really has become a thing, right?

With people on the far left begin to make common cause with people on the far right. And it's not immediately obvious. I could engage in sheepshot punditry, which I'm going to just now. I mean, it's like nutcases and conspiracy theorists, you know, it's like a magnet. Think of the horseshoe as a big magnet. You know, all the filings, you know, tend to go together, the horseshoe as a big magnet. All the filings tend to go together. It's like nutcase calls unto nutcase. But there's obviously something else. It's just sort of a disillusionment with the status quo, a deep distrust of any sort of

conventional wisdom, any sort of elite, any sort of establishment, a belief that America and our systems are thoroughly corrupt and discredited. So at some point they hate the same people, they hate the same things. Yeah. And especially the warmongers, they hate the warmongers, which is you and me, anybody who believes in, you know, stopping Russian aggression. So can we call them, they're anti-warmonger mongers. They're sort of, they're hanging out together against the globalists and the warmongers and the elite. Yeah. He has to be pretty far right, though, to look at Vladimir Putin and say, hey, there's my champion of Western civilization. OK, the other like mildly interesting development. And I say mildly because I do not want to encourage any irrational exuberance about what's happening in the Republican primaries.

But Donald Trump has apparently decided that Nikki Haley is somebody that he can punch down on. So he's out there. There was this weird episode over the weekend. Did you see this? Where she comes back to her hotel room and finds a birdcage from the Trump campaign. Everybody's going, what the hell is this about? And basically it's Donald Trump's jibe that she's a bird brain or something like that, which strikes me as one of his lamer sorts of things. And she's kind of shrugging, well, not kind of, she's definitely shrugging it off.

And I think that her folks are going, see, Donald Trump thinks that I'm the number two now. So where are we at with Nikki Haley? Because it sure seems that way. I thoroughly agree with that. I mean, Trump's been beating up on Ron DeSantis for months. DeSantis has plummeted. I don't know if he's statistically still, I think nationally he's still in second, but he's on his way down. What's the point of continuing to kick him? So Trump's now kicking somebody who's on her way up and that's Haley, right? And she may have stalled. She had a really good first debate. Her second debate was okay. Not, not amazing. Right. But she had some momentum. So if you're Trump, because remember Trump is like Kronos, right? He's just, he's just want to eat all the children. He wants to kill everybody off.

He's thoroughly consumed with self-preservation and with hurting anyone who gets near him. So I think it's a compliment to Haley that his campaign is targeting her at this point. I think she's right about that. She's been sort of waffling back and forth in Trump's camp and my appeasing Trump and my Trump adjacent. Do I want to be vice president? Clearly now she has decided that she's not running for vice president. She's running for president. I don't think she's going to have a shot. But if you're looking at this, OK, the field coalesces around somebody.

And by the way, I feel like we're back in 2015 all over again. I don't think it's going to be Glenn Youngkin. I think that's wish casting. It's obviously not going to be Ron DeSantis. I'm sorry to all of our good friends over at National Review. I mean, they tried so hard to will him a personality. I mean, they really, really did. I mean, they tried all of the de-asshole programming they could possibly think

of. It failed. So if it's not going to be Yunkin, if it's not going to be DeSantis, then is it going to be Nikki? Which on paper is not a crazy idea, right? Right. To her credit, look, a lot of us have criticized Ron DeSantis for not being different enough from Trump, right? He's running as a substitute for Trump, but he goes to the Trump audience and he tries to be Trumpy. And the whole, we're going to shoot him at the border thing is part of that, right? Stone cold dead at the border.

And as you point out, if people want that, they're going to go for Trump. So to Haley's credit, partially, she's not doing that, right? She's been different enough from Trump to sort of carve out an audience among the non-Trump voters, which is a substantial number of people in the Republican Party. Not enough, but it's

substantial. And so I think that makes her a more viable alternative to Trump. And this birdcage thing and whatever, and his attacks on social media are probably part of him recognizing that. And his power to hurt her is less than his power to hurt DeSantis because the people- Why? Tell me more about that. Because the audience she has targeted is not so thoroughly Trumpy, right? This is really a good point. So Ron DeSantis made himself vulnerable to Trump by basically saying, I am the successor for MAGA. So I'm going to go as hard MAGA as I possibly can. So this is my constituency.

When Donald Trump basically said, no, you're fake MAGA, that did go at his target audience. Haley has really been targeting the more rational, uncommitted Republicans who will all come back to Trump eventually. We all know that. Yeah, these donors that are sitting around thinking, you know, who are we going to support now? What are we going to do? No one's going to say, we can't support Nikki Haley because Donald Trump says she's a birdbrain. I mean, that's disqualifying, right? So you're right. Right. I mean, Chris Christie has gone right at Trump. And while I applauded for that,

and I think you do too, it may be that he has alienated a sort of middle audience in the Republican Party of people who don't really like Trump's personality, but they like Trump's policies. They don't like attacks on Trump. Haley has been kind of weaselly. She's navigated in between these and I don't like it morally, but maybe it works better. So she has an audience of people who, as you've just described, Trump can't take away from her so easily because they've already decided they're not going to vote for Trump. But there's also sort of a larger audience that she could reach in the party by being a little bit nicer. It may be the difference, Charlie, between New Jersey and South Carolina.

You know, New Jersey is very blunt. We say what we think, right? And South Carolina is more like, bless your heart. It's a subtler way of taking digs at people. And Haley has been doing, with the exception of her attacks on Vivek Ramaswamy, which I applaud, she has been subtler. And it may be that she has made herself more viable as a result of that. What she gets out of it, I don't know, because she's not going to be vice president. Okay, so what are you going to be looking at this week? What have we forgotten

to talk about today? I just feel that things are rushing so quickly. I'm really kind of interested in these impeachment hearings, the impeachment inquiry hearings against Biden. Yeah, they're going so well. And what they've found and not found on it. And I'm particularly interested in this complete lie that they're promoting about that Biden went to Ukraine and said that they should, you know, we're going to withhold a billion dollars unless you fire the prosecutor because the prosecutor is going after my son. That was debunked years ago. It was debunked years ago, but I see this everywhere now. The Republicans are relying, because of course they don't have a quid pro quo. They have Hunter Biden as a sleazeball who tried to profit off his connection to his father. True. And they don't have anything on Joe Biden because he didn't do anything. So they're trying to turn this firing of the prosecutor into the quid pro quo. And I'm going to be writing something

about that. Yeah. I mean, if that's their quid pro quo, they're not going to go anywhere. I mean, on the other hand, look, I do think that people need to recognize how sleazy some of the Hunter Biden, some of the family stuff was. This doesn't rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, but this wasn't an error in judgment. And maybe the error in judgment is that Joe Biden just loves his son too much. But I mean, clearly you had these folks who were trading upon his name to make a lot of money. And the reason people were paying them a lot of money is because they thought that perhaps it was going to buy them some sort of influence. So it's the appearance of it. Again, it's depressing to read, but unless they can show that they actually got something for it, there's kind

of a lot of nothing here, especially, and I hate the whataboutism card. I really, really do. But I just don't know how you can become really, really morally indignant. I mean, genuinely morally, as opposed to pretending to be morally indignant, as opposed to the performative aspect. When you're looking at the Trump family and seeing like, yeah, well, the Trumps would never trade upon their name in order to make money. We never heard of this Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump folks. I mean, what is that all about? I agree with that. And this is an area where I think the bulwark can play a useful role, because there's too many people who are Democrats, who are progressives, who think that the way to oppose Republicans is to hold the party line and never acknowledge anything. This is a terrible, terrible mistake on their part. There is a serious problem

at the border. Republicans are right about that. And Democrats need to step up and deal with it, or people will turn to the wannabe dictator to deal with it, right? And in the case of corruption and Hunter Biden, no, Joe Biden is not corrupt, but Hunter Biden absolutely used his father's name to make money. Joe Biden probably helped more than he should have in terms of like going to dinners with people and that kind of thing. He shouldn't have done that. And Democrats should be upfront about the corruption of what Hunter Biden did. It was certainly trading on his father's name and exploiting the appearance that he could get his father to do things. And that's just gross and wrong. And it hurt Joe Biden, and it'll hurt the whole party if we don't face it.

That's right. And also, I mean, it is the problem for Joe Biden because he can't fire his son, right? I mean, it's like under normal circumstances, I mean, you can get rid of Bob Menendez, but you can't get rid of Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden's going to be there. And this is part of this culture of political denial where people say, well, you know, if you just don't talk about these things, they go away. And I'm sorry that, you know, and you're paying attention to this. It's like watching a prairie fire come toward you. OK, you're going to have to confront this and simply saying there's no prairie fire.

There's no fire. I see no fire. If you see a fire, there's something wrong with you. There's no fire. I see no fire. If you see a fire, there's something wrong with you. Then you're not going to be able to engage it. So they're going to have to engage on all of these things that many of our commenters say, please don't talk about the fact that he's old because if you don't talk about it, nobody will notice. Please don't talk about inflation because otherwise people will think that it's gone away. Please don't talk about Hunter Biden because otherwise people will think that it's gone away. Please don't talk about Hunter Biden, because otherwise, you know, people will think that the Democrats have suddenly developed this incredible ethical

compass. The problem with that line is that, boy, you know, we have this one corrupt party and Democrats are just the moral avatars. If you're not going to acknowledge that the Hunter thing is a problem, it's going to be hard to be taken seriously. This is part of the problem, I think, of our siloed world and punditry that doesn't actually deal with real people, that you go into a room with real voters in a swing state and say a mythical state like Wisconsin and say, well, you know, what I really love is, you know, that there is no inflation anymore. There is no problem at the border. And, you know, Hunter Biden, it's all made up.

People are going to go, okay, what? Right. I love what you said about silos. That is the problem. So to everybody out there who's like you, Charlie and Will, you and everybody, you should stop talking about these things because nobody, you know, you are living in a silo. You need to hear from more people who, a broader cross-section of America. That doesn't have to be the people who are at the Trump rally, but like this guy, Trump is sitting at like, you know, even Stephen with Biden,

a guy who tried to overthrow the government is sitting at even Stephen. You got to get out there. You've got to talk to a broader cross-section of people. I think that's part of your job and mine, Charlie, is to introduce the lefties who think that if we don't talk about this, nobody's talking about it to all the people who are talking about it, about inflation, about the border, about all of those things. I totally agree with you. And so, Will, we will continue talking about this and we will talk again next Monday, because Think How Much Smarter will be a week from today. And thank you all for listening to today's Bullwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sexton. Just a quick reminder, you can watch us on YouTube. This will be published later today. And keep an eye out for our very, very short morning shots.

They're only about two or three minutes, but I think they carry kind of a punch. We'll be back tomorrow. We will do this all over again. The Bullwhip Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.